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Sharing spaces
The contract between the city of Middletown and Middletown City School District where the schools will move onto the fourth floor of One Donham Plaza took affect on Monday, July 1. The city is still making final adjustments to make way for the school administration, which is in the final throes of packing for the move.
Contract: A 10-year-contract with two options for 5-year extensions.
Rent: Beginning on July 1, 2015, the schools will pay $5,425 a month, which will increase by 2 percent a year beginning on July 1, 2018.
Cost savings: District officials say they spend about $65,000 a year in maintenance and utility costs.
Source: City of Middletown and Middletown City School District contract
After the move
With the Middletown City School District administration taking over the fourth floor of the Middletown City Building at One Donham Plaza, here’s what’s on the second and third floors:
Second floor: City Manager’s office, Public Works and Utilities administration, Economic Development, Small Business Development Center, Human Resources, Purchasing, Finance and Income Tax, Health Department, Clerk of Council, and the legal department.
Third floor: Engineering, Building Inspection, Community Revitalization, Planning and Zoning, and the municipal court’s small claims and civil departments, some court offices and the probation department.
Before the end of the month, the city will be ready to have the city school district move in to One Donham Plaza.
In a unique city-schools partnership, the city of Middletown and the Middletown City School District agreed in January to a 10-year contract — with options for two five-year extensions — where the city will lease the top floor of the city building to the school district.
“I think there is some potential additional partnering that’s unrealized,” said interim Public Works and Utilities Director Preston Combs, who is heading the city’s efforts in the move. “There may be some shared training, (information technology), purchasing. It’s almost endless what we can work on together.”
The partnership was announced in October and the deal was negotiated until it was approved in consecutive weeks in January by the school board and then City Council.
The contract, which took effect Monday, will allow the school district to move its administration offices onto the city building’s fourth floor. In exchange, the school district will pay the city — beginning on July 1, 2015 — $5,425 a month. Those payments will increase by 2 percent a year beginning on July 1, 2018, according to the contract.
The delay in beginning the lease payments is to help the school district in its moving costs.
About half the fourth floor is vacated as of the first week of July, said Combs. Walls are being painted, carpet is being replaced, wires and cables are being installed and moved, and furniture is being moved.
“All that is happening for now is the city is finalizing their move out and we are painting and prepping walls,” said George Long, business manager for Middletown schools. “Furniture still needs to arrive and the move is still a few weeks out.”
And for now, the school board will just leave 1515 Girard Ave. vacant and use the space for extra storage, said Gracie Gregory, spokeswoman for Middletown schools. The district is currently sorting through boxes to determine what can be destroyed and what needs saved.
“It will be new and fresh (at the city building); we still have paneling here (on Girard Avenue),” Gregory said.
Gregory said the first school board meeting to be held in city council chambers will be on July 22. The district will continue to partner with TV Middletown to record school board meetings, Gregory said, except now residents will be able to watch the meetings live and access online.
“This (location) will be more convenient for parents,” Gregory said.
When the school administration moves in, there will be very little space available in the city building, Combs said. This is resulting in many departments having to purge old files.
“We’ve consolidated an awful lot of stuff,” Combs said. “It’s like your house. If you have space you keep stuff, but if you have less space you have less stuff.”
When it’s finished, it is projected the city will have spent $150,000 to accommodate the move, which will be repaid by the school district when the rent payments start in two years. Council allocated $200,000 — a $50,000 increase from the original request — from the downtown fund, but a lot of the work has been done in-house.
Two organizations, Keep Middletown Beautiful and Middfest, left the city building to accommodate the move. Keep Middletown Beautiful moved to the Rathman Building in Smith Park and Middfest temporarily relocated to the We Can Business Incubator on Central Avenue.
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